An Internal Conversation

Bill's Shoulder Devil: "Hey, you kind of regret missing out on Da Boyz GT tournament earlier this month.  Since you're not going to go back to Age of Sigmar or jump on the Warhammer 40K bandwagon, you should build a Kings of War army for next year's tournament."

Bill's Shoulder Angel: "But you hate the idea of painting hundreds of figures for an army."

Bill's Shoulder Devil: "Sure, so why not build a small model count army, like Ogres?"

Bill's Shoulder Angel: "But you don't like Mantic's Ogre sculpts, and Kings of War tournaments tend to have a minimum Mantic model requirement."

Bill's Shoulder Devil: "Hey, says here in the rules for this year's Da Boyz show that there's no minimum number of Mantic models required for their Kings of War tournament.  You should find some ogre models you do like."

Bill's Shoulder Angel: "Well, you have been really admiring the ogres that Bob Olley sculpted for Ral Partha back in 1991, and they are available again from Iron Wind Metals..."

Bill's Shoulder Devil: "We could do an army of under 40 figures total."

Bill's Shoulder Angel: "Yeah, I don't have a counterpoint."

Bill's Shoulder Devil: "Just to make it interesting, you should paint tartans on them all.  Make each unit it's own ogre clan, and give each unit a different patterned tartan on their cloaks or kilts."

***

So I guess I'm adding this to my project list for the 9th Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge and beyond.  I've got an army list drawn up that I like and am happy with, figured out which figures I'll need, and emailed Jacob Fathbruckner of Ral Partha/IWM about getting the ones that aren't currently in the IWM online store. 

Painting Gods have mercy on me. 

Wendigo WIP

Last year as part of the Secret Santa exchange, I received (alongside several packs of skeletons) a metal Wendigo figure from Reaper Miniatures, courtesy of Thomas over at Learning by Doing.  This is a really gorgeously ghoulish figure, gaunt, with long limbs, hooved feet, a skeletal face and antlers.  A perfect representation of the cannibalistic "spirit of the lonely places" of Algonquin folklore, a creature born of famine, isolation and desperation in the deep winters of the American wilderness.  I'd gotten it cleaned up and glued to a 50mm square base (a spare from a Fireforge cavalry boxed set) but hadn't gotten past that point.

Yesterday, frustrated with some Bones figures not behaving the way I wanted them to, I resupplied on black primer and matte varnish and took advantage of it being a warm, dry day to put a coat of primer on him.  Once it was good and dry I got to work.

Skin was basecoated with a couple thin coats of Reaper's Golden Shadow, since I wanted to emphasize that this creature was once human.  Over this I did a wash of a 50-50 blend of Nightshade Purple and Deep Red, to give a bruised, postmortem lividity shade.  Here's a pic:

Once that was dry, I highlighted the skin with Golden Skin, then again with Golden Highlight.  The bony ridges of the face, the exposed vertebrae and some exposed ribs got a final highlight of a mix of Golden Highlight and Creamy Ivory - to suggest skin drawn so tightly over bones as to be translucent. 

The hands, feet, ears and area around the mouth were given another wash, this time a 30-60 mix of Nightshade Purple and Deep Red to prepare these extremities to be painted as frostbitten.  Once the wash was dry, a couple thin coats of Pure Black allowed just enough purple to show through to keep things interesting.  Also, don't Google Image Search "frostbitten hands" too soon before or after a meal!

Teeth were picked out in Creamy Ivory, while antlers were given heavy drybrushes of Stained Ivory, followed by Yellowed Bone and finally a light brush of Creamy Ivory to make them really stand out from the pallid skin.  Eyes were given a basecoat of Viper Green, while the patchy fur on its body was drybrushed first with Cloudy Gray, then with Misty Gray.  The furry part of its tattered loincloth was given a basecoat of Muddy Brown, then drybrushed Earth Brown.  At this point I took this pic:

After taking that pic, I basecoated the "leather" areas of the loincloth with Lonestar Leather, but when I tried highlighting with Leather Brown, Leather Brown went on very thinly and I ended up having to go over the entirety of the loincloth with it to get an evenish coat.  I'll probably go back and wash it with Lonestar Leather and give a final highlight of Golden Shadow to the loincloth.  Eyes were highlighted with Moth Green, giving them a sinister, glowing pinprick in the center of each bulging orb and marking my only departure from very naturalistic tones on this figure. 

At this point, Atticus decided to jump in the middle of everything and tell me I'd done enough painting and not enough petting today, forcing a conclusion to today's painting session. 

I've got a couple extra Bones skeleton warriors that I'll be chopping up, painting and gluing to the base during the flocking process to represent kills half-buried in the snow by the Wendigo. 

As for what I'll use it for...

While the Wendigo would make a spiffy Major Demon for Frostgrave, I'm actually thinking he's more likely to see use in Dragon Rampant; having finished my Undead army and wanting a break from Bones given the annoyance I'm having with the last of my Anhurian figures, I've drawn up a "Warriors of Evil" list based largely around Ral Partha Chaos Warrior figures (rereleased through Ironwind Metals) as a "next project" to begin work on, and the Wendigo would be an imposing addition to that list as a "Greater Warbeast."

Or I might throw him at my D&D players if they go up in the mountains...

All Quiet on the Gaming Front

Things are going to get quiet around here again as Gina and I prepare to move into a new apartment on June 30th.  To facilitate the moving process, we've begun packing a lot of "non-essential" things - so while our clothes and such haven't been packed, things like her yarn stash and my wargaming/painting supplies have been.  I don't anticipate having the time to work on anything between now and the 30th, so better to have it up and out of the way - we're planning on doing one hell of a deep clean of the apartment before we leave as a courtesy to the landlady, and having stuff neatly put away facilitates that that much easier.

I'm pretty pleased with myself; I got my craft supplies - glue, knives, clippers, baggies of bases, etc - neatly packed into a single Tupperware container, while another (larger) container has all my unbuilt plastic figures and leftover sprues of parts sorted and contained.  I even got my terrain squared away.

Next will be packing my RPG materials - I'm only running one game this month, and possibly playing in another, so most of my stuff can get boxed up immediately.  All my AD&D materials, all my OSR stuff, and 99% of my Call of Cthulhu stuff can go right in a big plastic tub to await moving day.  I've got I think three separate binders full of graph paper that I should probably condense down, and that's it for that chunk of the packing.

Last big thing is regular books.  I've done a pretty significant cull of my personal library, bagging up books to donate to the library when they're books I know I'm unlikely to go back and reread or that I have duplicates of, so there's not a whole lot left to pack up.  The nice thing is I think Gina and I's collections of books will fit nicely into the two three-tier wooden bookshelves we have, which frees up the six-tier metal shelf to house kitchen appliances when not in use and free up space in our new, smaller, kitchen.

Atticus was a big help organizing the book cull, as you can see:

Once we're settled, I've got a couple things in the pipeline ready to be worked on.  I've got a stack of Reaper Bones skeletons still in blisters from Christmas, and I've backed the Skull and Crown Kickstarter for Renaissance-style skeletons as well, expected to ship in July.  Between these, I'm looking at producing an undead force that I can rotate between different rulesets - Kings of War, Dragon Rampant, and lately I've been looking at Ral Partha's 1986/87 "Chaos Wars" ruleset, resurrected through a series of wildly successful Kickstarters over the past few years by Iron Wind Metals.  The rules are available for free from Ral Partha, and ChicagoWiz's breakdown of the rules allay a lot of my concerns and make it feel a lot smoother than my initial reading of the rules had suggested to me.

There's been some talk between myself and a few local wargamers of my acquaintance about putting together our own wargaming club to satisfy our interests in games like Frostgrave, Kings of War, etc., that aren't supported in the local stores, with my new apartment serving as unofficial clubhouse for once- or twice-monthly gaming get-togethers...I'm hoping we can make that work.

So that's where I am at the moment, hopefully this will all work out.